Commentary on Political Economy

Sunday, 4 December 2011

On Revolution

These are notes on a much larger piece on some of the conceptual and practical matters involving "Revolution". It is a topic that is destined to become increasingly relevant in coming years as this miserable "system" implodes and we are called upon to erect a new one. It's the question of new beginnings... Apologies for the quotations in Italian from Arendt's "On Revolution" (please use Google Translate). This piece will be updated from time to time, so please keep checking. What I am trying to do here is to toss up some ideas about a new Constitution for our societies, and in the process find out what is going wrong not merely from the strictly "economic" angle, but also in terms of the more strictly "political" one - in terms of the inability of existing bourgeois social and political institutions to hide the enormously "repressive" role of capitalist production in posing a barrier to our own equally "enormous" productive potential! This notion of "capital as a barrier to production" is central to the theory that we are developing and to the critique of capitalism that we are carrying out. Cheers.

In this sense, affluence and wretchedness are only
two sides of the same coin; the bonds of necessity need not be of iron, they
can be made of silk. Freedom and luxury
have always been thought to be incompatible, and the modern estimate that
tends to blame the insistence of the Founding Fathers on frugality and
'simplicity of manners' (Jefferson) upon a Puritan contempt for the delights of
the world much rather testifies to an inability to understand freedom than to a
freedom from prejudice. (H.
Arendt, On Revolution, ch.3, p.193)

62.

OnRevolution

[I]t is beyond doubt [62] that the young Marx
became convinced that the reason why the French Revolution had failed to found
freedom was that it had failed to solve the social question. From this he
concluded that freedom and poverty were
incompatible. His most explosive and indeed most original contribution to
the cause of revolution was that he interpreted the compelling needs of mass
poverty in political terms as an uprising, not for the sake of bread or wealth,
but for the sake of freedom as well. What he learned from the French Revolution
was that poverty can be a political force of the first order. (ch.2, pp.61-2)

The
subject-matter of the Economics – its subjectum, its substratum, its nervus
rerum – is the “system of needs and wants”, it is the sphere of “necessity”, of
“pro-duction” that “gravitates” ultimately around the “reproduction” of a
society. Whether “labor” is seen as the source of “value” or whether value is
seen as arising from the “saving” of “labor”, the fundamental reality is that
“labor” remains at the heart of “the social question”. That “freedom and
poverty” may be incompatible is a problem or “social question” that may be
resolved simply by eliminating poverty: but if “freedom and luxury” also are
incompatible, as Arendt suggests, then humanity has an even greater problem –
and freedom has found an insurmountable barrier!

What Arendt means
here, if one subtracts the verbosity, is that “the pursuit of luxury” or
“private happiness”, may tend to shrink the social, “public” space or universe
of human beings so as to render them a-political – with the consequent neglect
of the forms of political activity
that “freedom” must stand for, in opposition to “passive” liberties. To be “free” is for Arendt to engage actively in the
political life of one’s community. To be “at liberty” to do something, instead,
is to be the passive beneficiary of a right or benefit “conceded” to oneself by
the powers that be. In this sense, one may say that “freedom” and “the pursuit of luxury” – not “luxury”
itself! - may well be at odds, but not be necessarily “incompatible”!

With Classics and
Neoclassics, the sphere of “happiness” or “utility” (for the Classics “labor”
has utility because it “creates value” positively, whereas for Neoclassics it
“consumes” the world so that “utility” or “value” consists in the “saving of labor” instead, which
therefore has “dis-utility”) is always “private” because “labor” can be
“divided” so the whole point of the “sociality” of social labor, its phylogenetic interdependence, is lost. The
private sphere, civil society or the status civilis, is what must be protected
from the State, which was constituted
for this purpose by political convention as
a way of prevention or escapefrom the state of nature or status
naturae and its scientific hypothesis
as the domain of necessity. But
because in this status civilis, in
this State, the individuals composing civil society have necessarily alienated the“freedom”
they enjoyed in the state of nature, now this “freedom” is reduced to and even confused
with “liberty”. Whether it be under Hobbes’s “Leviathan” or State-machine,
or else under Locke’s consensual “common-wealth”, what the State protects are
the “individual possessions” of the individual – life, liberty and estate –
that these individuals possessed already
in the state of nature but were under constant threat from aggression. There is
no notion of “public happiness” in this political theory because “happiness” or
“utility” or “pleasure” is limited to the oikos – the household (Alberti in Della Famiglia, to Franklin).

Arendt rebukes
Weber (implicitly) because the latter assumes that the “frugality” of the
Founding Fathers was purely Puritanical – when in fact it could have been the
“opposite” of retreat from the world, the opposite of “renunciation”: the
“frugality” and “industry” of the Puritans could have been due to a greater
concern for “public happiness” and therefore “freedom” than for “private
happiness” and therefore “luxury”. This again would contrast with Weber’s
interpretation of the spirit of capitalism. Here the “citizen” would prevail
over the “bourgeois”. We note that in Weber this “antithesis” does not even
begin to exist because the Political is identified immediately with the
protection of the “needs and wants” of civil society – of what he calls “free
labor”.

At the same time,
Arendt is chastising Marx for equating “freedom from poverty” with “freedom”
itself. So the mere fact that people are de-livered from poverty and lifted
into luxury does not mean that “freedom” will be instored. Here Arendt is
divorcing “wealth” or “value” – economic action – from political institutions:
- which is something that neither Marx nor Weber are prepared to do because
they tie “the most basic needs of social life”, including that for “freedom”,
to the sphere of “social reproduction” in Marx and “the care for material or
external goods” in Weber, thereby “reducing” the notion of “freedom”, the
Political, to the sphere of the social relations of production, to Economics.

This helps
explain why in Weber there is concern for parliamentary democracy only to the
extent that it is “functional” to “the rational organisation of labor” and
ultimately to “the iron cage”. Both the ascetic ideal and the iron cage are
“irrational”. Weber sees the “freedom” of “labor” only as “autonomous market
demand” and not in broader “political” terms. This is Arendt’s reproach to
Weber. But she forgets, as Marx would pointedly remind her, that her own
high-brow conception of “freedom” does not deal integrally, let alone fairly,
with what is the most important aspect of human existence under capitalism: -
wage labor, which Weber confuses with human living labor.

There can be
precious little “freedom” if one is under the yoke of “the rational
organisation of ‘free’ labor under the regular discipline of the factory”, as
Weber defines “capitalism”. Arendt succeeds only in demonstrating her “poverty
of philosophy” by mistaking Marx with Proudhon, the bathetic author of “The
Philosophy of Poverty”! That poverty and freedom are two different concepts is
blatantly evident. But that Marx ever made the mistake of confusing de-liverance (Latin, liber, freed slave) from poverty with freedom
when in fact he was stating merely that any “freedom” that fails to abolish
poverty offers very little solace to those who are poor, is an accusation
unworthy of Arendt’s otherwise admirable intellect. Perhaps the fundamental
flaw in her entire thesis in On Revolution
is the fact that her ethereal notion of “freedom” is brought down to earth with
a heavy thud when she comes to consider the leaden and corruptive role that
“private interests” have played in any “Constitution” known to humanity. –
Which once again only serves to show that no “Constitution” can preserve her
notion of “freedom” unless “the social question” is resolved first – which is exactly what Marx was arguing!
(Unfortunately, Arendt does not tackle this ineluctable problem, fatal to her
entire argument, until the very end of her book! As Camus says in La Peste, “too late to turn it to
account”!)

The crucial
difference between Marx and Proudhon is that Marx did not waste time
“philosophising” about poverty, preferring instead to find out the social “causes”
behind its indisputable existence in capitalism. And the difference between
Marx and Weber is that, having found out that capitalism reduces “living labor”
to “labor power” – that is, in Weber’s own words, to “the rational organisation
of (formally) ‘free’ labor under the regular discipline of the factory” -, Marx
could see that the social power of the bourgeoisie consists precisely in this
violent “reduction” of human living labor
to mere “labor power”. Weber’s phrase “free labor” is not an oxymoron because
his “labor” is an entity that can be either “free” or “not free” only in a
“formal” sense, given that he wrongly identifies all human activity with “labor
power”. For Marx, instead, it is impossible for “living labor” to be anything
but (philosophically) “free”: it is only under the violent command of the
capitalist that living labor is turned into unfree
“labor power”.

The problem is
then to understand what relationship there is between “freedom” and “labor” in
Weber’s work. If Weber is concerned about “profit” or “capitalistic economic
action”, it is because it is this that “provides” rationally and most
efficiently for those “freely expressed” wants and needs of workers through “the
rational organisation of labor (meaning, “labor power”) under the regular
(capitalist) discipline of the factory”.

There is a sense
in which the Neoclassical notion of “equilibrium” has to do with the
“necessity” of “scarcity” of “provisions” in proportion to endless “wants”.
Both Schopenhauer and Robbins understand the Will and “wants”, respectively, as
“insatiable”. But whereas Schopenhauer sees this as a motive “to renounce” the
world of wants (the Entsagung),
Robbins takes it more realistically as the “budget constraint” of Neoclassical
Theory that allows it to become “the science of choice” – what makes “choice”
subject to “scientific and rational” treatment. It in order to escape from the
“gravitational orbit” of “equilibrium” that the “freedom” of the entrepreneur
is needed for Schumpeter. Indeed, the entire point to Neoclassical value theory
is precisely the ability of the capitalist-entrepreneur “to free” himself from
“immediate consumption” by “deferring” it and thereby “substituting” it with
“labor-saving tools”. It is not the “renunciation” of Schopenhauer whose
society is entirely “eristic” and the State can only keep individuals from
descending back into the bellum civium. For Neoclassical theory the State can
reward the productivity of labor by protecting the “deferral of consumption” of
the capitalist entrepreneur. But Schumpeter sees this “deferral” or
“renunciation”, this Askesis, as still limited to the “Statik” framework of
general equilibrium analysis, insufficient to explain the “Dynamik” features of
the capitalist economy, its “development”, its ability to defeat “stagnation”.

For Schumpeter
the “deferral” or “saving” of the Neoclassics is inadequate to explain value
and profits because these can arise only from the “creativity” of the
entrepreneur who “elevates” and therefore “frees” himself from the gravitational
pull of the “circular flow” (Kreislauf), reaching thereby the heights of
“innovation” by distinguishing his “individuality-personality”
(Unternehmer-personalitat) from that of the “mass”. The State must therefore do
more than just protect property rights: it must also protect intellectual
property from the “rentier” capitalists (finance). Not “labor” but “enterprise”
is the gateway to “freedom” and “profit” as against “interest” and “rent”.

With Classical
theory, instead, the capitalist appears “redundant” from the start, because
“labor” is the source of value. Even Marx’s version preserves this “socially
necessary labor time” and the “reproduction of society”. – Whence comes the
“surplus value” that capitalists exploit from workers. For Schumpeter,
“surplus” is the domain of entrepreneurial “creativity”, instead. But Marx
introduces the “use value” of living labor. - So here the sphere of “necessity”
is labor-power and that of potential “freedom” is “living labor” (Grundrisse)
whereas surplus value is both exploitation and “potential” for freedom.

In Hobbes the
“absolute” is all Euclidean: the legitimacy and legality of the Sovereign is
founded upon the “necessity” of the social contract – which is
“philosophically” free, as in Montesquieu, but coerced “externally” ob metum
mortis. The State is the ultima ratio in foro externo (the inter-national state
of nature) whilst it preserves “the law” for its subjects in foro interno:
similarly, the subjects are “free” in foro interno” (the psyche), but not free
“in foro externo”, because subject to the law. It is exactly the same in Weber
– that is why he is more the descendant of Hobbes than of Machiavelli (pace
Aron). The leitender Geist is certainly no Principe.

The same can be
said of Nietzsche. But here, as with Weber who copies him, the Sovereign is not
“ab-solved” (Heidegger in Schelling)
from the Political because the “scientific hypothesis”, the “truth” of the
intuitus (Leibniz) in the identity of “laws” with “self-evidence” or
“necessity” is impossible – because Nietzsche denies that anything – including logico-mathematics! – is
“self-evident”! The meaning of the
Rationalisierung is all here! (Marcuse sees right, but he simplifies the
problematic by not tackling this “link-lex-nomos” between “labor” as “labor
power” and as “living labor” and the “sociality” underlying both! Arendt, true
to Jasperian-Heideggerian form, does the same! “On Revolution” is dedicated to
Karl! Cf. Jaspers’s notion of “tutto-circonfondente” and Heidegger on
“Ab-solute” in Schelling’s) The
Hobbesian geometric (Spinoza’s more geometrico) “system” is “stagnant”, it is
an “equilibrium”, a Schumpeterian Kreislauf that does not allow for “a remnant
of ‘individual’ freedom” in the sense of Entwicklung – it is the impossible
“re-solution” or “equilibration” or Ver-gleichung or “balance of forces” that
“ab-solves” the Sovereign from all need to justify or found its legitimacy and
legality: the “laws of the commonwealth” become “self-evident” like Euclid’s
and can dispense with explanation or foundation – they are the Absolute, the
Sovereign, the State-Machine is the
Absolute.

As Arendt
remarks, the “laws” of States and those of mathematics differ (p.221?) because
the latter describe the constitution of the mind – they do not! (psychologism).
Both “laws” are conventional (Nietzsche) but when juridical laws are made
ab-solute they become mathematics,
they become “fate”, which is the opposite of what “truth” is supposed to be!
So, in fact, “self-evident truths” (Jefferson)
are not “truths” at all (whence the Jeffersonian “we hold”) – indeed, their
“ab-soluteness” demonstrates that there can be
no truth except “truth as a value”. (If “truth” existed we could not “think” it
– it would be Leibniz’s intuitus originarius.) (See also her remarks on “the
Absolute” and temporality on p.237 of Italian translation where Arendt posits
the human “initium” as a pure act of will: and recall Schopenhauer’s insistence
that “the causal chain” has no Kantian “unconditioned beginning” because this
is “toto genere” different from “the chain of events” – and must be therefore
the thing-in-itself! Marx distinguishes similarly between living labor and dead
labor. Also, the thought of the “unity” of the Founder, at p.238 and 239, is
neither Machiavelli’s nor Harrington’s but goes back to Descartes on the
“Maker” of the world required to be One to be perfect. Russell [on Leibniz]
shows that this “monism” belongs to Leibniz as well [cf. also Heidegger in “The
End of Philosophy” and MfoL].)

For Weber the
Rationalisierung “overcomes” the opposition of freedom and necessity. The
“freedom” of labor is a by-product of conflict over the provision for wants.
And the “quantification” of this conflict, together with its specification in
terms of how much is produced and what, depends for its “maximisation” on the
“rational organisation of labor” upon
condition that it be “free” to formulate its “choices” through autonomous
demand, not just in terms of “goods”, but also in terms of the “exchange value”
of itself, of “labor”. It is the market mechanism that allows this “osmosis” or
“synthesis” of the “necessity” of the provision for wants” given the
“insatiability” of the latter and the “scarcity” of the former, and therefore
it is possible for a Hobbesian common-wealth to be established in which the
provision for wants becomes “rational” through capitalistic economic action.

The question that
Arendt poses by way of implicit criticism of Weber (so does Marcuse in terms of
“industrialisation” and “science”, or Heidegger with his ‘Technik’) is that
“the iron cage” is taken by him to be naturaliter
the entirety of the Political, as it was for Hobbes, in that “civil society”
now is identical with the State
because the entire “task”, legality and legitimacy, of the State is precisely
this “guarantee” of the market mechanism as the ultima ratio, the scientific
hypothesis of the self-interests of atomised individuals whose only aim in
social life, in exiting the state of nature, is the pursuit of “private
happiness” or “utility”. The Political becomes absorbed into the Economic –
except that the “freedom” of labor involves the “specification” of its wants
and needs not merely through the market mechanism but also through “compromise”
in Parliament of the necessarily conflicting self-interests that are filtered
by the market.

Therefore Weber
does not think that the market is capable of being a “mechanism” that
“develops” through entrepreneurial “creativity”. Rather, the “crisis”
represented by conflict can be “negotiated” in a peaceful battleground, in
sparring matches in parliament whereby “the will to power” of individual
leaders can be accommodated and integrated in the overall “system of
production” and indeed become its “motor”, its guide and “government”. This is
what political parties as “mass parties” are supposed to do. But the
“socialisation” of production is simply inescapable precisely because of the
“system of wants and needs”, the iron cage, that has formed in “the Occident”.

Arendt says that
“the social question” is separate from “freedom” – hence her effort to
distinguish “power” from “authority”, potentia from potestas. Weber thinks that
this is “romanticism” pure and simple because the Political assumes an
increasingly technical character. Marx instead insists that the Political is
the tool that poses a barrier to the development of the forces of production,
to the “freedom” of living labor, until these break loose from its strictures,
or rather, the social relations of production come into contra-diction with the
Political, and force the “abolition” the State. Marx does not explain the
process of this “liberation” of living labor from wage labor: but Arendt
assumes naively that a revolution and a constitution can be “freed” from the
“social question”! But at the very end of her reflections, she has to
capitulate and admit that “private interests” will always interfere with
“public” ones (ch.6, sec.3, p.291).

Here Weber is
called directly into question for his definition of a “State” (in PaB). But
once again Arendt misses the point that “the social question” intruded on the
making of the US Constitution just as much as it did on the dis-solution of the
French! Instead, she dwells on Jefferson’s
insistence for “constituencies” that remind Arendt of Luxemburg’s exaltation of
“soviets” (ch.6, p306).

So for Weber
(PaB) the State is “necessarily” the dispenser of violence, which is its
“power” (meaning potestas), and the “mechanism” is kept “alive” (the living
machine) by the leitender Geist which is NOT “free”, just as “labor” is not
“free” except “formally” so long as its “market demand” remains “framed” within
the parliamentary rules, the con-ventum (convention), that “select” the
Politiker but pre-vent (prevention) the bellum civium. Unlike the Hobbesian
“Sovereign”, the State-machine, Weber envisages a “parliamentary system” that
can “select” and “assign” responsibility
so that “politics” does not become a game of “conviction”. Here “the machine”
is able “to select” its “leadership” not “mechanically” but within “rules” that
maintain any “promises” within the realm of “possibility” – no “false prophets”
(like Trotzki). No “beautiful souls” like Arendt or Rosa Luxemburg (exalted in
the final chapter of On Revolution) either. Freedom and necessity are much more
“specific” or “rational” in Weber, down to the “constitutional design or
Frage”.

This
“compromise”, this “dis-cutio” or “dia-lectic” that Weber envisages almost
socratically, is what Schmitt denies is possible (remember accusations of
“dithering” and “filibuster”): the State cannot have both legitimacy and
legality at the same time – either the laws are “arbitrary” or else the
legislator is illegitimate. Only potestas can give legitimacy to law provided
we accept the “legitimacy” of the “power to decide over the exception”.

For Weber and
Schumpeter as for Locke, the “scientific” inevitability of capitalism –
identified absolutely with the market economy – is what makes the “potestas”
and the potentia of the State indisputable or “common-sensical”. Thus Weber
sides a little more with Hobbes and Nietzsche on the “pessimistic” side,
whereas Schumpeter is more Lockean in his optimism – but then is as elitarian as Weber or Pareto and Mosca:
for Hobbes the State prevents the state of nature, for Locke it simply protects
it (especially the “estate”). There is no “initium” in the Treatises, as Arendt observes. But there is in Hobbes. So Weber
“needs” a constitution whereas Schumpeter (his entrepreneur) does not. Weber
does not have to explain conflict, but then has difficulty explaining how
“parliamentary democracy” is able to function, whereas Schumpeter needs only to
presume that it “may not” function to come up with elitarian democracy or with
an authoritarian state. We know that Weber eventually concedes defeat.